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It was strange to stand before the Amyrlin in riding clothes. She had grown used to wearing trousers now, and rarely wore dresses, even when she was not on the road. Somehow, it seemed more natural that way, although she was never quite certain why. Siuan had seen her in travelling clothes before, but she had worn them out of necessity then, not out of choice. It had been three years since they had last seen each other, and it seemed to her that every inch of her body had changed. Only the dark hair, falling chestnut and heavy nearly her waist, had remained the same.
Siuan nuzzled into the lee of her neck, breathing deeply as though to draw in Moiraine’s scent. Moiraine held her, suddenly awkward in her body as if she were again a thirteen-year-old girl, still raw with grief and awash with odd conflicting desires. Siuan felt so light in her arms, radiant and golden with her filigree earrings and weightless dark curls like a living star. She had brought her hand to rest against Moiraine’s chest, and her touch was warm against the bare skin above the hem of the shirt, so that there seemed to be scarcely any separation between their two bodies.
And then, in a moment that seemed to last an eternity, Siuan looked up and they kissed, and Moiraine felt relief flood her. She had been truly afraid she had become somehow repellant to Siuan in space of their long absence. There was something about her, some innate quality that seemed to prompt others to speak harshly to her, or to bemuse those who spoke to her with care. With Siuan it had never been that way, though the fear lived in her still.
But Siuan’s hands were everywhere on her body, restless and eager. She felt Siuan’s touch beneath her shirt, now, against her stomach, settling in the long dip of her waist, the other hand reaching beneath the neckline to cup her breast. Beneath the shirt she wore nothing, for shifts and foundation garments were not made for garments like these, and Siuan’s hands against her bare skin made her gasp. Her body felt wonderfully sensitive, as though she were holding Saidar, for she had been so long without intimate touch it was as though she felt all the little sensations anew.
She still remembered the first time Siuan had touched this way, not as friends but lovers, in all the soft hidden places, and it was as though her body were on fire, all of it budding and pulsing and swelling outwards. She seemed to feel an echo of it now and swooned, but Siuan hadn’t finished with her yet, and gently one of her clever hands slid downwards and she pressed two fingers between Moiraine’s legs against the seam of the light summerweight wool trousers. A lighting fork of pleasure shot through her at the pressure and she gasped aloud, her hips jolting involuntarily into Siuan’s hand.
Somehow she had never considered this possibility when she came to Siuan dressed as she was. How indecent it was, and how wonderfully expedient, too. Her breath caught as Siuan rubbed her through the fabric, pressing the nub of felled seam against her apex where the pleasure felt sweetest, and the sound she heard herself make was choking and low. Siuan did not respond to it outright, but Moiraine knew she had heard, for the fingers pressed into her harder, but circled more slowly, teasing.
She realized that Siuan might fuck her that way, upright and fully clothed, and wondered if Siuan would make her beg for it. She had never begged Siuan for anything before, at least not in the realm of pleasure; she was not prideful, but she’d clung to a certain self-possession, and Siuan had always honoured that in her. But Siuan was Amyrlin now, and surely no one could be too overproud to beg the Amyrlin. The thought sent a wild spark between her legs, and she thought later, later.
There was scarcely any later for them, but they would have a few days at least, perhaps even a few weeks. She felt giddy with it. And Siuan was still touching her, firm and sweet. The rhythm was urgent, insistent, and she collapsed against Siuan, clinging to her shoulders, any sense of propriety abandoned. If she spent now there would be something so deliciously indecent in it. She imagined walking the Tower with a stain of dark want between her legs. That had never been a problem for them when they both wore novice white, for anything could be hidden beneath the folds of a dress. But now…
“Don’t stop,” she gasped, voice choking and low, and Siuan didn’t.
Siuan had undone the fastenings on her trousers and reached beneath them, and for the first time in years Moiraine felt Siuan’s touch against her bare cunt, and the sensation arched in her like golden fire. She knew that Siuan still practiced the knots she’d used to fasten moorings and weave nets, and her fingers were clever and strong. She surrendered to them completely, burying her face in Siuan’s neck, and Siuan fucked her like that, upright, one hand moving between her legs, the other against her back.
The climax came hard and strong and she shuddered and clung to Siuan, and Siuan bowed under both their weight and righted herself, and they stood there gasping and panting. She could not fully believe what had happened or how quickly she had come. She had always been slow to climax, and sometimes she felt numb there, as though several layers of thick woollens pressed against her and muffled all sensation, but had always put that down to adrenaline or fear. But this meeting between them was as clandestine and hurried as any other; perhaps even more so, for Siuan’s rise to Amrylin brought a new wave of painful scrutiny upon them both. So perhaps it was she who had changed.
Siuan was gazing at her with an awed look, and she took Moiraine’s face in her hands and kissed her again and again. Moiraine felt light all over, still hazy from climax, and they seemed to her to be the sweetest kisses she’d ever had.
Together they removed her trousers, which had worked their way down to her hips in their frenzy, and her blouse and Siuan’s dress, which had in its tailoring enough structure it seemed to be the exoskeleton of some long dead creature, and finally Siuan’s shift. Each time Moiraine had seen her Siuan had worn finer and finer dresses, each of them more delicate and beautiful, and each of the shifts she wore beneath them seemed to suggest the shape of her body beneath more than the last. This one was very fine indeed, and a little spasm of desire passed through her at the sight, though not as strong as the one that came when it was lifted away.
The smallclothes she herself wore were men’s smallclothes, but trimmed with threaded ribbons and lace, in some misbegotten attempt of the Cairhienan seamstress to introduce a feminine sensibility into the garment. They both laughed a little at that. Well, at least the ribbons were blue.
Then they were both naked, laying skin to skin in bed, touching each other. She felt a stab of apprehension as Siuan’s eyes moved over her. Her body had lost the soft girlish quality it had when they had first become lovers. Siuan had liked her then, but would she now, when Moiraine took her hands and moved them from her breasts, when she only wanted to be touched in certain ways and not others?
Siuan’s eye had gone to the scar on her leg, a long pinkish gash where no hair grew. But she had expected that, and Siuan had not said anything, just kissed it very gently, as though she were a goodwife kissing a child’s scraped knee. Beyond that, she made no comment. Siuan had new tattoos, but they were healing and sensitive, still sitting on top of the skin, so she let them be for a moment.
Then they kissed, and Siuan’s hand went again to her breasts, as she’d feared. She had always liked it when Siuan looked at part of her with desire, but now she needed them to be just another part of her body, a neutral erotic zone whose lure came only from its responsiveness to touch. Gently she caught Siuan’s hands in her own and lifted them away. “Not yet,” she said softly, glad she had schooled herself not to let nervousness show. Siuan made to grin at her and realized half a second later that she hadn’t been teasing, then nodded soberly and brought her hands to Moiraine’s shoulders instead. That was all. She felt oddly relieved.
Gently she began to touch Siuan and was even more relieved to find wetness there beneath her fingers. She felt that Siuan could lie about matters of desire, could cloak her revulsion with gesture or words, but her body could not lie, at least not in that one essential way, and the knowledge soothed her. Siuan’s body was supple and smooth, unmarked by scars or insect bites as hers was. Her brown skin had always had a wonderful dewy quality to it, and now it shone gently with a diffuse radiance. Her nails had been cut neatly into small perfect white crescents, and her hands were unlined and without calluses. Her hair fell in gentle clouds about her shoulders, and her body was soft and warm, little muscles moving gently beneath the skin like water against a shoreline. She was wet not just between her legs, but down the sides of her thighs as well, and coating the soft dark hair there, and when Moiraine touched her there she made low breathy sounds.
From the moment they had been alone, Siuan had seemed to want to touch her, to press against her, and now her hands were restless, moving over Moiraine’s body as though it were a landscape, licking and biting at her mouth and neck. Before, it seemed, they had always reached for each other in the most obvious and tender places, the breasts and ass and navel and between the legs. But she found Siuan’s hands moved again and again to the outsides of her arms, stroking the small rise of muscle there, running her thumb up the soft underside, where not even the faintest of hair grew. She seemed awed by that place, so strong and undefended at once, touching the faint rise of Moiraine's bicep with one finger.
Moiraine watched her, transfixed. She remembered how Siuan had traced the outline of her body all those years ago in Tear, and it was like that, but different, too, for it was not out of a desire to give comfort, but, Moiraine thought, a genuine fascination. She was seized by the urge to enfold Siuan, to protect her, though Siuan hardly needed protection from anyone. But when Siuan had touched her arms so gently it was as though she imbued them with a new erotic power, and she felt charged with it.
She touched Siuan quietly and insistently, then slid her knee between Siuan’s thighs and they moved together in rhythm that way. One of Siuan’s hands had come to settle against her breastbone, almost above her heart, and Moiraine brought it gently to her chest.
"You can touch me now," she said. "I don’t think I’d mind, now.” But that wasn’t quite what she meant. “I'd like that,” she whispered.
So Siuan touched her there, squeezing the soft flesh almost urgently, rubbing and pinching an already hard nipple between her finger and thumb. The touch seemed more purposeful, somehow, but also more neutral, and she felt herself respond to it, but in a new and wonderful way. It was not the thought of Siuan touching some secret part of her that thrilled her, though it had in the past, but merely that the pressure felt good against a sensitive place.
Then Siuan thumbed her other nipple and twisted, hard, and Moiraine cried out, a throaty low sound, and she gasped: “Siuan-”
Her voice, so often disused on the road, seemed to have moved subtly to a lower register in the intervening years, and she found it took more and more effort to summon up the clipped affectation with which she had spoken in youth. She was careful in the tower, for she knew that, no matter what Aes Sedai pretended, speaking with the accent of a noblewoman would always confer certain advantages. But with Siuan now she spoke in her true voice, the one that only Lan before her knew.
When she spoke Siuan’s name, Moiraine felt her lover shudder volubly against her, her whole body arching into the motion, and pull Moiraine tightly against her. “Oh Moiraine,” she said, her voice tight and low just inches from Moiraine’s ear. “How beautiful you are.”
The words flooded her with something wild and golden. She had been called pretty before, but the word had always seemed too fastidious to her, or herself too sombre to fit. But she felt, somehow, that when Siuan called her beautiful she meant it in a different way from merely pretty, something more elemental, more wild. She knows, she thought, though she could not quite say why.
She herself could not say precisely what had shifted in her. But, somehow, Siuan had sensed it in her without her having to speak it. In a way it was not so strange, for Siuan had always known what she was thinking, sometimes even before she did. And Siuan was touching her, kissing her, without disgust or fear. Immediately her hands had moved to Moiraine’s body, to her skin, and she had pressed her naked body to Moiraine's nakedness, lay against her, moved against her. If anything, she thought, Siuan had seemed more eager than usual, and the possibility filled her with awe. She had feared that Siuan, who had grown used to fine garments in her time at the Tower, would have disdained this part of her. But could Siuan really desire her more?
It seemed impossible. But then Siuan wanted two fingers inside, then three. She had rarely asked for three in all the time they were together, and she wanted them urgent, with quick firm hard little thrusts, bracing herself with one hand in a vice grip against’s Moiraine’s shoulder, rising to each thrust with her hips. She was so wet Moiraine slid in and out of her with ease, and she found herself gasping, too, in sympathy of a kind, whenever Siuan made a sound.
Her climax seemed to come over her all at once, and she cried out, a sharp sudden sound, and drew Moiraine even closer against her so that their bodies were crushed together. Moiraine felt Siuan tense as a great wave of wetness seemed to spill from her. The perfect crescents of her little white fingernails dug into her shoulder, but she was miles beyond caring now. Then at last Siuan went still in her arms. Her face was still and peaceful, her chest still rising and falling with gentle breath. Moiraine kissed her nose and forehead and felt the small muscles in Siuan’s face move as she smiled. She felt impossibly tender. She could smell Siuan’s wetness, the low musk, almost terricolous around them, and her sweat smell, and the sweet warm scent of her hair.
Afterwards they were tender and lazy together. Sometimes she found she liked sex not so much for the sensation of it but for these moments that came later, when they kissed and spoke together and she nestled herself in some warm crook of Siuan’s body like a little animal sleeping by the fire. But it seemed this time she had felt everything so much more strongly. Stories and songs made much of the act of coupling and its attendant pleasures, but she wondered sometimes if they had been overblown. But when Siuan had touched her earlier it had not seemed like an exaggeration.
She felt she had never been quite still inside her body before. She had always felt so ill at ease when naked, as though someone had swapped her body with that of another's body, one very like her own but with subtle differences, and it would always betray her, for she would never know what had been changed. Clothed it was easier not to think about, but in her skin the old uncertainty returned, even with Siuan, even alone, so she tried as much as possible to be clothed. She was awkward around other people in any state. But coming to Siuan in her new clothes seemed to have freed something in her. Of course, she thought. It seemed only right that it should be this way. And she felt it again, that great sense of rightness that she could not name.
And the sensations in her body were so strong. When her face took on an Aes Sedai’s agelessness and she felt a pang of sadness that she could no longer disguise herself as a boy, and it came to her that she liked to wear the boots and trousers not only out of need but from some quiet inner reason, too. It was the same way Lan said he had never really thought about what it would feel like to be a woman until he had felt her own sense of herself through the bond, and realized the strange ache of missing in himself.
When she had wrapped her chest in a length of cotton bandage and looked for the first time at her reflection in the small mirror on the inn wall, it was as though some faint but impassible membrane in her life has been stripped away. Sounds seemed to rush in at her. Colours were brighter to her eyes. It was like holding Saidar, but she had not channelled a drop of the One Power. It was as though she had been standing always half a step outside of her body, watching through the eyes of someone else. Now it was her own eyes looking, her own hands.
They were in Altara then, the sky red with the last embers of sunset. The small mirror above the cracked basin was already tarnished enough even in the low light, but what she saw was enough. She brought her hands to her chest and felt the new flatness there. The difference was small, but it was a symbolic thing above all else, and the change was oddly exhilarating.
She heard someone singing, two women denouncing each other in the street, an ox cart moving in the gravel road as children ran hectoring the carter for apples. The slender elm rustled its branches just outside the window. She put on Lan’s high-collared shirt over her newly bandaged chest. That was even better. It was not that she wanted to be a boy, or not quite, anyway, but it seemed so natural now that she had done it.
After a time there was a knock at the door; Lan in his adjoining room had felt her elation through the bond. Wordlessly he threw his arms around her and she held him. “The shirt suits you,” he said. “We should get you trousers to match”
She smiled. Her body felt flushed with happy pleasure. “And you can have my old skirts,” she said. They had both agreed, tacitly, and with some measure of sadness, that it would draw attention if he wore her skirts and gowns, but he had tried on her clothes when they were alone, and he hummed against her hair in gentle affirmation.
She had even thought of coming to Siuan that way, with her chest wrapped and flat, but worried the other woman might find it strange. Now, though, she felt certain Siuan would understand. Even now as they lay together, she noticed Siuan had begun to hold her differently. Even her hand on Moiraine’s collarbone had a different weight, almost the way a princess might lay her hand against the muscular chest of some princeling from a storybook picture. How sweet it was to be known! How impossible, she thought, and how wonderful, too.
A wonderful lassitude was spreading through her, as much from the pleasure and release of climax as it was from the relief of the shared understanding that had grown between them. On the road she had always felt true sleep evaded her. Even with Lan beside her, some part of her stayed conscious always of the hum of insects, the snapped twig or rustling underbrush that foretold the approach of intruders, cold seeping from the nightime earth into her body as she slept, or waking with a start in the hazy predawn stillness to find herself in a strange bed.
She had become so accustomed to making herself cold as soon as their couplings were through, but that night she allowed herself to linger in the pleasant warmth of Siuan’s arms, and slowly, without fully realizing, slid into a deep and dreamless sleep.